BREAKING NEWS: BHS goes into administration, but it is to be business as usual for now.

Laura Cartledge

High street retailer BHS has filed for administration today, putting approximately 11,000 jobs and 164 stores at threat.

Administrators Duff & Phelps are now trying to find a buyer for all or part of the business, but in the meantime BHS will continue to trade.

The news comes just a month after a crucial creditors vote secured a rent cut in a bid to save the company.

Plans had also been revealed to sell the BHS flagship Oxford Street store.

The BBC is reporting that ‘talks with Sports Direct to sell some of BHS’s 164 stores collapsed over the weekend, and it is understood any buyer would do so only if it did not have to take on the £571m pension deficit’.

This is the latest blow for a company which has been unstable for a while.

Last year it was reported that billionaire owner Sir Philip Green had sold BHS for £1, 15 years after he had purchased it for £200m.

BHS, which launched in 1928, could be the biggest retailer to collapse since Woolworths disappeared in 2008.

As yet the future of the seven stores in Sussex; Brighton, Crawley, Chichester, Eastbourne, Horsham, Hastings and Worthing, is unknown.